Prayer to Mars

After a battle the survivors dedicate to Mars a selection of the arms of the slain. Two lines, and both of them a receipt.

Votorum haud surde meorum — not deaf to my vows. The god is named neither by an attribute nor by ancestry but by what he has just done: heard. An address after the fact, and the only fitting one for a thanksgiving inscription — it is itself the record that a contract has been performed.

The litotes is cold: not "gracious" but "not deaf". The commander acknowledges receipt without rising to enthusiasm.

Arma electa — chosen arms. Spoil was not tipped out wholesale: the best was set aside for the god, off the top, before division among men. It is a share, not a present, and the custom of dedicating the enemy's weapons held at Rome from earliest times into the empire.

Spirantum turba — the crowd of the breathing, that is, of those still breathing. One word states exactly who is left to give thanks.